Application of spatial data in economic analysis

PhD in Space Science and Technology
Bari, Italy

Ahmed M.Osman

Introduction

The cheap availability of high-resolution satellite imagery has already become a powerful tool in economics, just as it has in other research fields and in the private sector.

Satellite VU 2023

Satellite VU 2023

Spatial and EO data for Economic analysis

Conventionally, utilization of spatial or earth observation data for economic analysis was limited to a few economic fields :

  • Environmental Economics
  • Urban/Regional Economics
  • Economics of Geography

Spatial and EO data for Economic analysis

Owing to the recent development of computer vision algorithms, economists have used satellite data not just to explore novel questions but also to tackle questions that could not be answered with traditional data sources. Some of the recent applications include:

  • GDP Measurement
  • Agricultural production
  • Economic activity
  • Urban development
  • Others

Tools and Techniques

Economists widely employed these two techniques to developed comprehensive analysis:

  • GIS/Spatial Modeling:
    • Incorporating GIS or geographical elements in economic models
  • Remote-sensing/EO data:
    • involves capturing and analyzing EO data.

Los Angeles Expansion Distance to water points

Research Frontier of Spatial and EO Data in Economics

Research Frontier of Spatial and EO Data in Economics

Following the advancement of the AI and machine learning techniques, most of the papers use :

  • Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics,
  • High-Resolution Satellite Imagery

Here are some of the papers…..

Recent applications

Teaching Machines to Measure Economic Activities from Satellite Images: Challenges and Solutions by Kim etal., 2020

  • How can we measure economic development without ground truth?
  • Explored the effective integration of machine learning techniques with satellite imagery to extract economic measures, enabling more informed policy development.

Teaching Machines to Measure Economic Activities………….

Kim etal., 2020 applied deep learning approach to satellite images to measure economic development in the settings where ground-truth data is not available.

Model

Model

Teaching Machines to Measure Economic Activities…..

Model

Model

Teaching Machines to Measure Economic Activities…..

Model

Model

Teaching Machines to Measure Economic Activities…..

Model

Model

Recent applications

Remotely-sensed market activity as a high-frequency economic indicator in remote rural areas by Carnap (2023)

  • Presents a scalable method generating a high-frequency economic activity measure for rural areas of developing countries
  • Not only displays an intuitive variation with respect to exogenous shocks but also temporal and geographical detail at which remote sensing-based analyses are possible.

Remotely-sensed market activity………….

Carnap's, 2023 paper presented a method allows for the detection of periodic marketplaces and their monitoring over time.

Model

Remotely-sensed market….

Strategic potential partners

Strategic potential partners

Some of the strategic parteners for future collaboration are:

  • European Innovation Council
  • EARSC
  • Jameel Observatory
  • United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management

Thanks

ahmedmoosman.github.io